This research investigated the transition of a group of children from Early Childhood Education to the First Year of Primary School in a Municipal School in Mariana/MG, highlighting the importance of play in these two teaching modalities. It sought to highlight the child as the subject of the research and the protagonist of the theoretical concerns presented. The "ethnographic inspiration" approach made it possible to accompany the group of children at various moments in the school routine. The process of constructing and analyzing the data obtained in the research was based on approaches from the Sociology of Childhood: Corsaro, 2005; Ferreira, 2004; Kramer, 2002, among others. The research data included field notebook entries, video recordings, audio recordings of semi-structured interviews with school staff, video recordings with a group of fifteen children and focus group interviews.